"DEVASTATED"
Erosion on Smith's Point is accelerating and land is washing away faster than homeowners can move their houses
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
Of the 57 houses and cottages on Smith's Point, the ocean has unmercifully harassed 15 of them over the last five years.

Smith's Point Association President Tom Erichsen estimates that the beaches from the west end of Millie's Bridge to the south end of Massachusetts Avenue have lost around 50 feet a year in that time.

The sea's inland advance has forced one house to be relocated, with five other property owners filing for permits to do the same; has prompted the demolition of two more houses; put five more in imminent danger of encroaching storm waves and exposed half of another house's foundation. These houses - including Erichsen's own home at 34 Rhode Island Ave. - sit anywhere from zero feet to 250 feet from the beach.

"We've spent 23 years on Smith's Point, and I'm familiar with the neighborhood and with knowing people and the kids growing up there; it's devastating," said Erichsen. "This is something you don't prepare for, this is something you have to deal with. I can't speak for the other neighbors, but again they feel basically the same way. We were all aware that the south shore did erode, but the rate of erosion in the last five years has been more than we could ever imagine."

PHOTOS BY ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent Lucky to still be standing after this winter's round of storms, two houses on Smith's Point seem to be waiting for the ocean's next move. The house in the foreground at 34 Massachusetts Ave., owned by John and Marny Conforti and Ronald G. and Diane R. Russo, lost one corner of its foundation to Hurricane Noel on Nov. 3. The fate of the latter, at 36 Massachusetts Ave. and owned by Francis C. Callaghan Jr. of Wellesley, Mass., remains, like his house, up in the air right now.

Quoting from statistics compiled by the late Wes Tiffney, the erosion expert and environmental scientist who helped found the UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station, Erichsen said Smith's Point eroded an average of 10 feet a year from 1900 to 1950, a rate that lessened to a rate of five feet per year from 1950 to 2000. Nantucket Conservation Foundation Executive Director Jim Lentowski estimates that from 1998 to 2007 Smith's Point lost 117 feet - an average erosion rate of 13 feet per year.

Regardless of varying erosion rate approximations, Erichsen and other Smith Pointers believe the cause behind the rapid acceleration in erosion is a winter storm in 2002 that obliterated a shoal about 500 feet off Smith's Point that had buffered incoming waves and lessened erosion.

"The loss since then has been approximately 250 feet in five years," said Erichsen. "The storm that did that was in the winter of 2002/2003. In the past five years, we've averaged 50 feet a year."

One of Erichsen's neighbors, George Pappageorge, who bought his house at 21 Rhode Island Ave. about 40 years ago, said he feels powerless against the ocean's advances but lucky that he has yet to deal with having to rehabilitate or move his house.

"When I first bought, I lost a couple night's sleep knowing that there was some erosion out there," said Pappageorge of Milford, Conn. "I assumed I would be there, 10, 15 or 20 years, and we've been there 40 years."

Today, there seems to be a great deal more erosion than Pappageorge and Erichsen ever imagined. During a storm at high tide, the ocean now washes down Massachusetts Avenue around 250 feet to the southern end of the late Fred Rogers' house.

"It's showing no sign of relief," said Erichsen. "If anything is happening right now, with the loss of the dune [at the end of Massachusetts Avenue] on both the south shore and the west end, the beach is now, for the most part, level with the land mass."

Thanks to Hurricane Noel, which grazed Nantucket last Nov. 3, three houses are in motion toward higher and drier lots. Erichsen and his wife, Jennifer, after purchasing a lot on Ticcoma Way off Fairgrounds Road and moving their shed there, are now making plans to move their house there as well. At Smith's Point, they have already moved their house several times and as far back onto their lot as they can, including a 46-foot retreat to a new foundation in 2007.

Hurricane Noel left Erichsen's septic system exposed, his deck dangling over the beach and utility cables and pipes protruding out from the bluff. On Nov. 6, the Conservation Commission issued an enforcement order for Erichsen to move his house again.

The ConCom also issued an enforcement order that day for Martin Levine of 45 Massachusetts Ave. to move his house back into the dunes on his .20-ofan acre lot and rest it temporarily on oak cribbing blocks.

Four days prior to the onslaught of Hurricane Noel, James and Barbara Heneghan of North Granby, Conn. were forced to demolish their beach house at 47 Massachusetts Ave., the closest house to the ocean on that end of Massachusetts Avenue. Though Noel took a huge bite out of the cinder block foundation of their house at 34 Massachusetts Ave., John and Marny Conforti, and Ronald G. and Diane R. Russo of Brooklyn, N.Y., still have 150 feet remaining to move their house inland, and they are hoping to get a few more years out of it.

Waiting in the wings for the ocean to pounce, said Erichsen, are other family houses that include the Faunce property, one house east of his land in the dunes. Beyond that is the McGilvray home, and then two others, including Edmund and Judith Corry's house at 33 New Hampshire Ave., which is currently up on blocks. Just east of that, James Pierson's house at 30 New Hampshire Ave. is also threatened by the ocean.

"This has been quite devastating for the community. Where many of these cottages were in the same ownership for years; things are rapidly changing," Erichsen said.

A potential solution awaits. For the last year, ship salvager Joseph Farrell, owner of Resolve Marine and property owner on Smith's Point, has been collecting data on how and where sand is moved from Smith's Point beaches, using two current-measuring meters planted off the beach at the end of New Hampshire Avenue. Farrell said yesterday that sand moves away from the beach for several days at a time - depending what the currents are doing - but is deposited elsewhere. At the Smith's Point Association's annual meeting last July 13 he offered to anchor steel tanks - called sand modules - where the protective shoal had once been to help slow erosion. But no Smith Pointers have contacted him about his offer, and he has, admittedly, been too busy running his now-global salvage business to follow up on his offer.

"It's really back to me to get moving on it," he said. "Basically, the thing is to come up with an overall game plan and submit it to the state and the Army Corps of Engineers."

Having heard Farrell's pitch to deploy the sand modules at his own expense, Pappageorge said that while most Smith's Point Association members seemed in favor of the idea at the meeting, as a group they are not inclined to move forward with it right now.

Which is not to say they are giving up. Far from it, he said.

"I'm looking forward to a good summer, and I'm

not a defeatist," Pappageorge said. I